Betrayal of the Heart
by FreakOTU
Summary: What if Excel had Shot Ilpalazzo at the End of Episode 25? Serious Fic.
1. Betrayal

Disclaimer: The characters of Excel Saga are not my property. They are owned by Koshi Rikdo,  
  
and I really think he won't mind my utilizing them this time.  
  
Hell Hath no Fury  
  
"What you did to me." Two people stood less than four feet apart from each other, each pointing  
  
a gun at the other.  
  
"Kill me." His gun began to waver as he looked at her bright green eyes, filled with tears as she  
  
kept her pistol aimed at his heart.  
  
"What you did to me." She watched as his gaze clouded over, and remembered that he smiled  
  
when he had shot her.  
  
"Kill me or I will..." He tightened his grip on his pistol, aiming straight for the point between her  
  
collarbones.  
  
"I'll do to you what you did to me." She stood there as he blinked, trying to muster the strength to  
  
pull the trigger, but she squeezed her own gun tightly and brought her left arm around as a brace for the big  
  
pistol.  
  
"Please...." He lowered his gun, looking totally crushed, realizing that he had betrayed and nearly  
  
killed the one person who loved him for who he was, not for what he could become.  
  
She looked at him, tightened her lips into a thin line and squeezed the trigger. 


	2. Lost

Disclaimer: I do not own Excel Saga, or any of the characters used in this story. Cheers!  
  
The trigger's pull broke cleanly, sending the triggering pin into the cartridge, igniting the powder,  
  
and sending the bullet on its path to destiny.  
  
Spinning as it accelerated, the bullet left the barrel of the gun milliseconds ahead of the expanding  
  
flare of flaming gases, pushing the little slug to speeds that no human could survive.  
  
As the flare of gases dissipated, the bullet hit, penetrated, and ricocheted through a piece of metal,  
  
deforming it and causing pieces of the shell to peel away as softer metal began to expand from the forces  
  
exerted on it.  
  
The bullet continued onwards, into a softer material; flesh. Tunnelling through muscle, the bullet  
  
smashed a bone into dozens of shards, many of which were pulled further into the body by the sudden  
  
vacuum caused by the motion.  
  
Slowing, the bullet deformed as it gouged a deep slash into an artery and tore open a lung, causing  
  
the air inside to whistle and wheeze into the body, collapsing the other lung from the sudden change in  
  
pressure.  
  
Finally, the now-totally unrecognisable slug exited the body, punching a ragged hole through  
  
another bone, tearing through some fabric, and finally ending its short flight by burying itself into a stone wall  
  
fifty feet away.  
  
Excel stared blankly as Ilpalazzo dropped to his knees, shock making its mark on his face before  
  
he reached up and touched the gaping wound in his chest. She instinctively knew the bullet was lethal, so  
  
Excel turned away from the wavering form of Ilpalazzo, walking purposefully towards the gaping hole that  
  
had been blasted into the thick wall by a Ropponmatsu's self-destruction.  
  
Standing at the exit to the mobile fortress, Excel looked back into the cavernous depths of the  
  
destroyed base, wondering if she should stay with her only friends as the impressive edifice began to  
  
crumble into chunks of concrete and metal, turning into a tomb of dreams and fantasies.  
  
"I have lost everything. Ilpalazzo is dead by my hand, Menchi is missing, and that strange woman  
  
who keeps on dying managed to escape with one of the people who found me after I had been hurt. I may  
  
as well try to make a new life for myself."  
  
With that, Excel slowly stripped off her dust and blood-covered vest, which had once been a light  
  
aquamarine shade, but was now dull grey and brown. Despite the work and effort put into the vest's repair  
  
work, much of it done by her own hand, Excel felt revolted by the touch of the thick, soft material, which  
  
had so often symbolized her loyalty to Ilpalazzo, and had often survived most of her misadventures without  
  
much wear and tear.  
  
Excel did not care about any of that, as she viciously tore the vest to shreds, pausing only to pick  
  
up a picture that had fluttered out of her pocket after the vest had been reduced to a small pile of fabric.  
  
She looked at the picture, sighed, and placed the faded photo into a pocket in her shorts, before she started  
  
to walk through the wasteland towards one of the surviving buildings in the distance. As Excel walked  
  
towards the drunkenly leaning tower she had randomly decided on, the last few ruins of the mobile fortress  
  
collapsed inwards, raising a cloud of dust, ashes, and a few scraps of light purple cloth.  
  
The wasteland was unforgiving, the dry winds leaching the moisture from Excel's skin, and the sand  
  
blown through the air made breathing difficult. As she walked away from the devastation, Excel, for the first  
  
time in her life, was truly lost. She had severed all ties to her life as a member of ACROSS, and what ties  
  
she would have wanted to keep had been erased due to her amnesia. Her only other companion, the puppy  
  
Menchi, had been in the fortress when it had gone up like a roman candle, and Excel didn't count on the  
  
small dog to not be blasted into its namesake.  
  
Instead of complaining, Excel continued to walk, heading steadily south to where Pad and  
  
Dominick's village lay. Eventually, stressed, tired, and extremely sore, Excel found an area where the air  
  
was still, she wasn't getting constantly stung by grit being flung at her, and there was enough light to see  
  
mostly around her. Sighing as she finally sat down, Excel pulled off her boots, stretching her toes out of their  
  
cramped positions, and pulled the picture out of the pocket in her shorts. Under the moonlight, she could  
  
barely make out the picture, but she knew almost instantly what it held within the confines of the coloured  
  
paper.  
  
The picture had been taken a few weeks after Excel had been viciously assaulted by a robot called  
  
Ropponmatsu, and as a response, Ilpalazzo had let the two senior members of the Ideological Organization  
  
ACROSS to take a break from their normal operations to further their plans of world domination. Excel  
  
smiled as the bittersweet memories of her past life flowed through her, tinged by the pain of the bullet  
  
wound that had nearly killed her. Raising her right hand, she felt the thick bandages that had stanched the  
  
bleeding from the final act of betrayal against her.  
  
Shaking off the memories, Excel again looked at the photo, amazed that something so small and  
  
fragile could have survived everything she had gone through. The picture showed her in her casual clothes,  
  
the baggy green cargo pants and yellow turtleneck that she always wore when the weather got cool,  
  
grinning and mugging for the camera. Just beside her in the picture was a slightly shorter woman, wearing  
  
a thick sweater and a pair of jeans and also smiling, just not as widely as Excel's grin.  
  
"Ha-chan. I wonder what happened to you? I know you would have been concerned about me  
  
ever since the city was destroyed, but your loyalty to ACROSS would have kept you from looking for me.  
  
I wonder if you're really dead, or did you manage to escape from the explosion? I hope you're alive  
  
somewhere out there, because you're my only friend out in this forsaken wasteland." Excel gently put the  
  
picture back in her pocket, wondering what she would do, then sighed and looked up at the stars above  
  
her.  
  
"I don't know what I'm going to do. I have to rebuild my life, but I don't know where to begin.  
  
Maybe I'll just try to find some other people first." Excel sighed again, leaned back against the ruined wall  
  
she had taken shelter behind, and fell asleep, curled into a ball against the night's encroaching chill. 


End file.
